For Children: Art Stories Since 1968

What happens when artists put children at the center of their work? This landmark publication surveys international art that positions children as active collaborators.

Until the mid-twentieth century, art made for children consisted mostly of creatively designed toys, building sets, and children's furniture. It was only in the late 1950s that artists all over the world started producing works that invited children to collaborate, treated them as equals capable of engaging with art on their own terms, and granted them autonomy and responsibility for their own actions. The exhibition For Children: Art Stories Since 1968 at Haus der Kunst, Munich, adopts this mindset. It examines our contemporary understanding of childhood in a group exhibition that extends throughout large parts of the museum and includes an expanded learning program that explores how children actively participate in global affairs and help shape reality, effectively cocreating the world in which they will live as adults.

On more than five hundred pages, this accompanying publication features works by artists that address young people, presenting a comprehensive survey of such art created between 1968 and the present. It touches on universal themes-including humanity, society, politics, economics, ecology, technology, and the future-that we first encounter as children and that continue to resonate in adulthood. With contributions by Ana Maria Maia Antunes, Gabriela Burkhalter, Ian Cheng, Emma Enderby, Pablo Helguera, Lydia Korndörfer, Lars Bang Larsen, Andrea Lissioni, Xue Tan, Jochen Volz, and others.